Regency Period Shoes!!

I have once again been PINspired! Here are a couple exquisite shoes I found on Pinterest that date back to the late 1700s, early 1800s, AKA The Regency Time Period!! (Read: Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice time period)

The link to this one just sent me HERE?? But look at the gorgeous detail on these simple leather soles!

From 1810s. American, featured at the Met Museum Online

These shoes were worn once, at a wedding. Beautiful!

Some of them get quite fancy! Image from (MFA Boston)

Had to include these! I had very similar shoes a year or two ago and they were my favorite ever! (the met again)

Unfortunately, Pinterest provided beautiful pictures, but the links the pictures sent me on a dead end on how I could conjure up my own pair! :(

Finally, I stumbled across this lovely tutorial!

link to the lovely miss charlotte's tutorial!

Seems pretty simple, and similar to the blue ballet flats tutorial I did about 6 months ago or so. So,I will plan to try making some of these over the next few weeks, and I will show you how it turns out! Possibly tutorial in the future....

Hope you are inspired as I am! Happy shoemaking!!!

Co-wash your hair people!

see! Wavy, not frizzy!

Some time last year I shared a post about how I wash my face using only natural ingredients, so I thought I would share my method for washing my hair as well. Around the time I started using baking soda to wash my face, I was also experimenting with using it to wash my hair as well. Apparently you can use the baking soda as hair wash and vinegar as a conditioner. The science behind it is that the baking soda causes the scales on your hair to open up to allow water to come in and dirt, oils etc. to escape. The vinegar, which has a similar pH balance to hair, helps to close the scales afterwards to keep the hair soft, shiny and strong.

In theory. I loved the idea of such simple and natural ingredients to not only on my face, but also my hair. However, I just couldn't get the balance right. My hair just continued to feel dry. It looked ok (not frizzy) but it felt so dry.

So I gave the idea up and decided to try co-washing. Co-washing is using conditioner only to wash your hair on a regular basis, and occasionally using shampoo maybe, if you want to. I have been doing this for about a year and I love it! My hair is so much less frizzy overall, and it behaves much better after I style it. Used to be if I straightened or curled or even blow-dried my hair, within a half hour the humidity would put me back to square one! The picture above is of my hair today. I didn't do anything special with it, no products, nothing, just washed and then raced off to work. Its not perfect, but it was fairly humid today, so it held up really well. I used to shampoo it about once a week, but lately it has been more like every other week. I find that really rinsing well at the end makes me not have to shampoo as often.

I first read about co-washing on naturallycurly.com, but I don't believe you really need to have curly hair to follow their ideas. Mine is wavy, and I get some ringlets around my face during the most humid days in the Iowa July and August weather, but in the winter it stays pretty straight. Or frizzy/straightish. I find that the Naturally Curly website is incredibly difficult to use, however, so I decided to provide my own tutorial here! (Complete with products I have tried that work for me)

 Here is what I do:

1. Wet hair thoroughly
2. Add conditioner to scalp and rub in, making sure it is saturated to the scalp.
3. Add more to the middle of hair. Make sure it is saturated as well.
4. Saturate the ends with any left over conditioner or add more.
5. You will use a lot more conditioner than you usually do. I probably use a good Tablespoon or two each time I wash. You want the hair to be pretty slippery feeling to ensure that there is enough in. (Optional: Comb in shower with a wide tooth comb before rinsing.)
6. Rub your scalp really well to work all the conditioner in to your hair. The conditioner has a small amount of soap to remove dirt and things, but you need to work a little harder at getting it to work. Work it up into a bit of a lather. It will not bubble like shampoo, but it will get a little bubbly. I find that if I do not use enough, sometimes the hair near my scalp on the back of my head remains a little greasy feeling at the end.
7. Rinse really really well. 

 The most important thing to remember when you chose a conditioner is that it not have any silicones in it. Silicones help to smooth the hair down after you wash so that it can look silky smooth. This is like the more lab-chemical  version of what the vinegar does. Sulphates in shampoo act as the baking soda to help open up the scales and get rid of the silicones. However, silicones really only acts as a band-aid to cover up damages to your hair, rather than to make it strong and healthy. If you only condition your hair, these silicones will build up in your hair, so we need to make sure the conditioner we use is silicone free. 

Here is a list of some silicone free hair products you can try!

I will make another post about the products I have tried and currently use.
Good luck! Please feel free to leave any questions or tell me how your co-washing experience went! 

(After a while searching, I found the breakdown of the "curly girl method" which is basically a tutorial for how to co-wash your hair. Doesn't have cool illustrations though...)

Face Scrubbies!!

Hey all,
Its been a while...

Today I made a short and simple project so I thought I would share. I believe I got this idea from Pinterest somewhere.

Super easy project. I have been using cotton balls to apply tea tree oil to my face at night (Fights pimples surprisingly well for an oil!) and was excited to find a more sustainable route. Sure a cotton ball isn't much, but hey, you have to start somewhere right?

All I did was trace circles onto terry cloth and a cotton weave fabric, cut them out, and did a zig zag stitch around the outside to attach the two fabrics and finish the edges somewhat. With my HuskyStar sewing machine, I set the stitch length to 1 and the width to 4. I also did a straight stitch down the middle to keep everything more in place.

Here are the results!

Before: 

After:

Wedding Color Theme using Photographs

When planning a wedding, it's easy to have a color scheme or theme to help narrow down the millions of options a bit. While many people choose one or two complementary colors, I found a way to ensure colors match while allowing for more than just the traditional one or two color scheme approach. Having several complementary colors helps to add depth and interest to a wedding. However, if the colors do not match well, the event can seem disorganized and amateur.

If you are not gifted with knowing what colors match, or you are simply not in the mood to spend hours and hours to come up with a palette of complimentary colors, here's a trick I implemented that worked quite nicely. 

Flip through a magazine (fashion, nature, home, doesn't really matter) or go to Google images and look for photographs that are striking to you, and contain colors that you might like at your wedding or other event. I Googled phrases like, "stormy sea" "folk art" and "autumn leaves."Try to pick images that look professionally photographed or designed.

Next, take that image you found and pick spots of color from out of the images you have picked. Try to pick a range of bold colors, pastels, and dark colors. This is not necessary, but is a good way to ensure that your color scheme is not overwhelmingly bright (think circus) or too washed-out looking.

Above is a set of colors I chose from images I found on Google. Notice how in almost all options I have a very dark color, one that is almost white, and one or two brighter colors. I used an eyedropper tool to pick exact shades from the images, and filled rectangles with each color using a free program called Inkscape. You could also use a program like Adobe Illustrator or you can also get out crayons or colored pencils (provided you have a large pack with many colors) to create a palette for future reference and planning.

Good luck!